'The Road Less Travelled': Book Review

I would like to start off this blog post by redefining the meaning of the phrase ‘self-help books’. Before I began ambling down this path of enlightenment, I would hear the above and think (ignorantly) “Self-help? That’s only for people with a mental problem” or “Only someone desperate and helpless would buy a self-help book”. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in having such flawed assumptions. In Ireland especially, we have quite a poor and twisted view of mental health and ill-health - a ‘shut-up-and-put-up’ culture has pervaded this country and especially the generations who grew up in an acutely Catholic society. Fast forward to 2020 where, in the last 5 years, the country has passed a marriage equality referendum as well as another concerning reproductive rights, and things look slightly better. So call them what you want - whether it’s self-help books, or personal development literature, or whatever - turning up for yourself and your mind is no longer considered a silly, fruity idea. Infact, it conveys the wish to live a better, more fulfilled life and be an all-around good citizen. Life is hard. Who doesn’t need a little help from time to time?

This brings me to introduce the first self-help book I have read in my 26 years: The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck, originally published in 1978 (available to buy here). Recommended to me by my therapist earlier this year, Peck recounts anecdotes from his personal and professional experience as a psychotherapist that underline his theory for how we should confront and manage problems in our lives and nurture a healthy relationship with ourselves as well as others. For a book written over 40 years ago, a lot of what Peck has to say still rings true, I think, from concepts such as uninformed parenting, to falling prey to over-dependency in relationships, to failing to strike a balance between our public and private lives. Certainly there were sections in The Road Less Travelled which did not resonate with me, and I will attempt to shine a fair light on what I deem both the good and the not-so-good in this brief review.

The most eye-opening part of The Road Less Travelled was, for me, the chapters dealing with the concept of love. Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” (p. 69). The main thing I drew from this was that, to choose to love another, we must choose to love ourselves too. We are the foundations for any loving relationships we go on to maintain: a sacrifice on our part shouldn't be needed. Peck continues to elaborate on this idea later in the chapter by addressing the notion of dependency, and how it can severely damage relationships, most notably our relationship with ourselves. He makes the point that, if one expresses the inability to live without another human being, that is not love, but parasitism, which made me laugh at the time but is actually quite apt. A powerful statement which further emphasises the point is: “Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other” (p. 86). At the end of the day, I, the individual, should be able to care for and support myself, and not waste so much effort seeking to be loved that I have none left to love.

I also really liked the opening chapter about discipline, which, once you get past the stark reality of it, is actually highly motivating. The opening passage is captivating, and goes as follows:

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters” (p. 3). 

This sucker-punched me. Mainly because it was so simple yet so true. It also reinforced my previously held beliefs that negative thought patterns and mindless complaining are futile and steal from us precious time that we could be using to grow and to heal. Peck refers to the attempt on our part to navigate life via shortcuts, which in the long run will never work. To obtain knowledge, skill, success in life, however each of us defines that, we must get there based on truth, on reality, on honesty, no matter how long it takes or how painful it may be. Otherwise, that ‘success’ is a lie.

What I liked most about this book was how Peck included stories about patients to illustrate his points regarding life and how we live it. I find it very helpful to be able to map something abstract, like a philosophy on life, onto a physical entity, such as a person. A good few anecdotes looked at women and how the way they were socialised from childhood on impacted on them negatively in terms of their feelings of self-worth, among others. Although at the time of publishing society thought very differently of women than it does today, I have unfortunately come across people who still, in the 21st century, view a woman’s main calling in life to be a wife, a mother, a homemaker, much like the case studies in Peck's book, and it reminds me of how far we have yet to travel until equality is a reality. Peck does not promote these kinds of beliefs himself, of course; they are however a backdrop to understanding his patients who are from a completely different generation to me and to most modern readers.

My main gripe with this book was the seemingly one-sided chapters dealing with religion and god-beliefs, which I didn’t really relate to at all. Almost everything Peck had written about to this point had been based in fact or at least in life experience, and I personally didn’t see how dipping into religion, which is not based on fact but on faith, fit with the rest of the book in that regard. I understand that religious beliefs for some people are inextricably linked to how they live their lives and how they view the world, but that is not the case for everyone, and I didn’t appreciate the insinuation by the author that, to achieve a true sense of contentment within oneself, one must act on behalf of a god. But that is a blog post for another day, I feel.

Overall, I would highly recommend The Road Less Travelled. While some passages were a bit lofty and difficult to follow, there are some beautiful nuggets of wisdom in there too, especially in how we think about our relationships with others. I have included a passage below, concerning relationships, which Peck borrowed from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, that I find extremely compelling. A smattering of other quotes also went up on my bedroom wall shortly after reading the book so that I could be reminded of them daily. The chapters dealing with religiosity, while a tad airy-fairy, can also be insightful, regardless of whether or not you possess a god-belief. If you have any goal for this year, besides getting through it, of course, see if turning the pages of a self-help book will assist you in doing you. You may be surprised.

References

Peck, S. M. (2003). The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (Anniversary ed.). Touchstone.

Gibran, K., & Kaur, R. (2019). The Prophet (A Penguin Classics Hardcover) (Illustrated ed.). Penguin Classics.